


in some new and strange disguise

by splash_the_cat



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Jupiter Ascending Fic Challenge, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5076238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splash_the_cat/pseuds/splash_the_cat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pursued by mercenaries, their ship badly damaged, Jupiter and Caine find a refuge that's not as safe a haven as they might have hoped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in some new and strange disguise

**Author's Note:**

> for the fuckyeahjupiterascending.tumblr.com [Challenge #5 Season of Fear Halloween Challenge](http://fuckyeahjupiterascending.tumblr.com/post/131181199870/ja-fic-challenge-5-season-of-fear)

_Nature keeps herself whole, and her representation complete in the experience of each mind. She suffers no seat to be vacant in her college. It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight, and afterwards return again... and if we saw all things that really surround us we should be imprisoned and unable to move... Nothing is dead: men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries, and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, **in some new and strange disguise**." _ ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Nominalist and Realist" 

 

 

Caine burst awake, rolling to his feet and reaching for his mauler and engaging his shield in one smooth motion. Something in his chest pulled painfully as he landed in a crouch - ribs, he thought, at least three broken - and for a moment he thought his right knee would buckle even as the room spun sickeningly, but he shifted his weight to take pressure off the injured leg, bit down on the inside of his cheek to clear the dizziness and kept his mauler up. The shield hadn't engaged, but there was nothing shooting at him right that second, so he decided to figure that out later.

Scanning the room, he opened his senses: a bedroom, large, empty but for furniture, silent, devoid of any real scent except the nauseatingly strong smell of his own blood. When his eyes adjusted completely to the twilight dim he saw the broken case of the emergency medkit from their ship dumped haphazardly on the floor. Whatever had been still in it was now strewn across the bed; the blood soaked into the bedclothes explained his wooziness. 

He closed his eyes against a sudden flash of Jupiter yelling, eyes wide as they careened down through the atmosphere. There wasn't much more after that: the scream of their runabout's emergency klaxon, the sick realization there was nothing he could do to stop their decent. Smoke, heat, spikes of pain, Jupiter's voice coaxing, begging, _ordering_ him to take another step, and another, to "just keep going Caine, please, oh god, _I can't carry you_."

They must have crashed, and he'd been hurt, badly enough he couldn't really remember. Which, great, meant a head injury on top of the rest. And Jupiter... 

There was _no sign_ of Jupiter, other than the faint scent of her he could now detect under the smell of his blood, hours old. Filtering it over the back of his tongue he picked out panic and anger and worry, pain too, but it wasn't overwhelming; she was hurt, but not badly if she'd managed to drag him here. She'd been okay when she left the room. Or was taken from it, but since he was still alive (and anyone doing so would never be stupid enough to leave him in that state, especially when he was defenseless), she'd almost certainly left under her own power. So, finish assessing his status, and then find Jupiter.

Caine eased up from his crouch, favoring his right leg. He limped over to the bed and leaned against the edge of it, placing his mauler in easy reach. Other than himself and Jupiter, he still scented no sign anyone had been here in a very long time, and the silence around him was so dense it made his teeth itch.

After determining there was nothing useful in the remains of the medkit, he used his belt to brace his knee, and found the source of the blood loss - the remains of deep, wide puncture right under his broken ribs, mostly healed. The empty Regen spray gave him some idea of how bad it must have been. He probed his head with his fingertips, finding a tender spot behind his right temple, and another much sharper pain at the base of his skull. Drawing in another slow breath over his tongue to the back of his throat he caught the hint of vomit. He'd puked at least once at some point, suggesting a concussion. Fucking fantastic. 

Gear next: the shield was a loss; the generator on the armband, and most of the armband itself pretty much melted right through to his skin. He ripped it off and tossed it into the pile of stuff on the bed. Lastly, he flared out his wings; the left creaked alarmingly and refusing to fully extend. Peering over his shoulder, he saw the middle joint of the span was crushed. He had his boots, and he might be able to glide on the good wing, if he had to, but going vertical with a head wound was stupid, anyway; if he lost consciousness, the ground was much closer if he was already on it. 

But he was alive, and more or less mobile, and Jupiter... he took another breath just for her scent, to quell his rising anxiety. Jupiter was alive, or had been at least four hours ago. If she wasn't here then she'd have gone to find a com-station and call for help. 

So he just had to find her.

******  


Caine found the corridor outside just as oppressively silent, and just as abandoned. No brighter either - just a faint glow from recessed sconces, like the whole place was on standby power, and even that looked unstable; the faint light stuttered and faded out completely every few minutes before settling back to its maximum murk.

He had no idea where they were, didn't even know the name of the planet. While he remembered what happened leading to their abrupt arrival, he'd been a little too busy evading the mercenary cruiser that had portaled in practically right on top of their little runabout and immediately opened fire on them to ask when Jupiter'd pounded coordinates into the nav computer and yelled for him to make the jump.

The corridor curved gently, only the occasional closed door breaking up the ornate friezes that lined the walls, arching from the floor across the ceiling overhead. The low light muddied their bright colors, casting grotesque shadows. The design reeked of Entitled, so this was probably an alcazar: for Jupiter to know about it, one of Seraphi's. And old one, too, maybe even abandoned before her death. Caine spot-checked a handful of the doors as he passed, but all were sealed shut. That explained the gouges on the door frame he'd seen as he'd left the room; Jupiter must have pried it open. 

He crept along, trailing the tendril of Jupiter's most recent scent. It overlapped with older traces that smelled of both of them and just her; she'd backtracked through here more than once: bringing him in, and then maybe going back for the medkit, he guessed. Bits and pieces of what happened were there, if he concentrated hard enough - Jupiter swearing in Russian between gasping breaths as she half-dragged him along, the caustic smell fried circuitry and burning power cells, his own choking gasps bubbling with blood, Jupiter stroking his brow, telling him to hang on - but doing so flared the pain in his head to blinding spikes. Nor did it give him mission critical information, so he filed it all away for later.

The scent of fresh air and vegetation prickled in his nose, followed by faint hints of noise. The sound swelled to a screeching cacophony as he eased around a tighter curve in the hallway to see a rupture in the corridor wall ahead. Based on the size, the scorching and the pattern of rubble blown against the opposite wall, it was the work of an inexpertly-placed concussion mine. Recent, too. At least he now knew how Jupiter had gotten them inside.

When he peered out the hole, all he saw was green and vibrant color. Once immaculately manicured grounds cavorted everywhere: vines slithered up the outer walls, shrubs towered into trees, and ornamental flowers and the tiny neon-hued songbirds some Entitled kept for their usually delicate and sweet song rioted among it all, the latter screeching and diving at his head. Traces of his blood and crushed flowers and greenery leading to the alcazar's exterior wall confirmed this as where Jupiter had gotten them in, the smell of them both all over this spot. She'd left him sitting against the wall, and her scent traced the outside curve for a few hundred feet in both directions, clearly searching for an entrance.

He didn't bother to explore further outside. She hadn't come back out here recently, and the former garden rose up so high and thick he was only just able to see the curls of smoke in the distance, maybe half a click away. That would be the remains of their ship, he guessed. If Jupiter hadn't remained with it after the crash, if she'd gone to all this effort to bring him here, then likely there wasn't enough left of it to get them off the planet or call for help.

A bitter "I told you so" wriggled free between ripples of vertigo as he forced focus on the distant smoke. Caine _hated_ these secret diplomatic missions of Jupiter's. He understood them, and the tactical need for subterfuge and limited personnel as she tried to quietly build the coalitions that would allow her to dismantle entire empires, but they were a daunting-to-utterly impossible task, one that had her scrambling to play catch up against the many-millenia head-starts her gene-children and the other Entitled had. And he hated watching Jupiter putting herself out time and again at the mercy of others who had no compulsion to actually assist her, other than Entitled whim, and who clearly had shit security.

Unless, and this thought washed away the wobbling in his head like a bucket of cold water, the security breach wasn't in Lord Faroe's court.

Hunt-focus had calmed his earlier anxiety, but Jupiter's fear and panic was so saturated here, even among the multitude of other smells, that he found himself grinding his teeth as his brain helpfully supplied holo-detailed snippets of his queen, hurt and exhausted, dragging him through the tangles of growth, running on little more than determination. Caine dug his nails into the heel of his hand, the sharp bite grounding him back to the here and now. Jupiter was smart, and so very determined, and she'd gotten them this far against the odds. She'd be okay until he found her. She _would_.

The only scent of her from here on was the most recent one, and it led to the first branch away from the curving corridor, deeper into the alcazar. With a last glance back at the only signs of life he'd seen so far, he followed in her wake, headed on into the increasing gloom.

His knee limited his speed, but the corridors still seemed to go on forever, silent and still. The short flush of warmth from the sun outside made the chill as he moved deeper inside that much more noticeable. It pricked along his skin, hinting at the shivers of shock. Unable to jog enough to push up his body temp, he switched the mauler back and forth between hands so he could rub better circulation into his extremities. 

Strange to be hunting her again, he thought, her scent in his nose familiar this time (though the myriad of emotions that it swirled around in his brain were still raw and new). It had been so much easier before, when she was just his target. Not, he admitted, that she really ever been just that. She'd been his salvation, his freedom, and his redemption even before he'd laid eyes on her, but then he was only compromised by his own baggage, and really had nothing to lose. Now, though... now finding her felt so much more frighteningly urgent.

He'd been on the move for at least fifty minutes, still hours behind Jupiter. The emergency lights continued to give out in random flickers that had him jumping, his senses on overdrive. Caine breathed deep to draw in as much of Jupiter's scent as he could, letting it roll across the back of his tongue: pain and fear, frustration and worry. But alive, alive, ali-

Sound was so sudden and sharp in the oppressive stillness that he didn't register it as a scream at first. It ripped the air again and the timber of it - _Jupiter!_

Bounding awkwardly to protect his knee, Caine charged down the hallway and there, movement up ahead: a flash of pale skin, dark eyes and mouth wide mid-cry-

He stumbled into an intersection of five corridors, staggering in a tight circle to peer down each of them, sighting down the barrel of the mauler, but there was nothing. Absolutely _nothing_. Caine slammed his hand against a wall, immediately regretting the intemperate move as his broken ribs protested. What was he, a fucking raw recruit on his first drop, jumping at shadows and seeing targets in every corner? 

_Soldier up and head in the fight, Wise. Stop fucking all around with your shit,_ he thought fiercely, the words a favorite admonition of Stinger's. The familiar cadence settled him somewhat, and casting around, he picked up Jupiter's trail again, though he waited to let his heart-rate slow to normal and to listen for a repeat of that gut-wrenching scream. When ten minutes passed in silence and his heart no longer tried to burrow out of his chest, he pushed on, now on high alert. It made keeping on Jupiter's trail easier, but the lack of other scents unnerved him, especially combined with the almost-darkness and the once-again suffocating _quiet_. Like a tomb, he thought grimly, but even that wasn't right. A tomb would have smells and sounds: dust and death and decay, insects and vermin. This place, it was an empty shell.

Deeper in, the alcazar's layout turned labyrinthine; the ornate corridors twisted and turned, branching off like the tendrils of the vines he'd seen outside. The place was stripped of anything valuable or useful, and without power, nothing would be working anyway. The little clock in the back of his head, honed by years of training and combat, ticked along through an hour, then two, then three. He had to slow every twenty minutes or so to breathe through the tightness in his chest from his broken ribs, and twice he had to stop to re-strap his belt around his knee. Even that support wasn't helping as much. Grunting, he yanked the belt as tight as he could without cutting off his circulation and leaned against the wall until the throbbing subsided from nausea-inducing to a merely teeth-grinding ache.

Jupiter's scent was rich right here - she'd brushed or leaned against the wall in this same spot. Caine splayed his hand over where the smell was strongest before giving into the urge to press his face there too, drawing in as much as he could, tasting her desperation and panic. There'd been no clear pattern to Jupiter's passage so far - she'd started down some halls before doubling back, ducked into the rare open room here and there, clearly trying to search efficiently in the beginning, but her pattern increasingly erratic. Caine took one last breath and pushed away from the wall. He reluctantly scrubbed his hand on a spot clear of her scent to get as much of it off his skin as possible - he very much wanted even that much of her close, but it would only muddy her actual trail to have it on him.

In the murky darkness and foreboding silence it was all to easy to let worry creep up the back of his neck along with the chill of the air, picturing her wandering these halls all alone, pressing on despite fear and exhaustion, trying to find a way to get them out, to help _him_. He'd fought with such concern often these last months as she wore herself into thin slivers, trying to cram as much of his world, her new world, into her head as possible, to find her way through the dangerous puzzle of her Entitlement. 

It hadn't gotten bad until she'd started testing the waters of her House politics. She was smart, had keen sense of patterns and people, and picked things up astonishingly fast for someone tossed into this the way she had been, but he saw it as clearly as she did: the Entitled perceived her not as Jupiter Jones, but as a pale shadow of Seraphi Abrasax, and gave her little regard and not-so-little ridicule for it. She soldiered through it all with a smile, but more and more exhaustion and frustration were her daily companions, keeping her on a knife's edge. She tried to hide it from him, as if he didn't breathe her in every moment he could, gauging how much farther she could push herself before she broke apart completely.

And now this, trapped hours apart in this fucking creepy maze... Fucking Entitled and their need to make everything as big as the damn galaxy-

The light stuttered and was that movement? He whipped around, scanning with eyes, ears and nose, but silence and dim and Jupiter's lingering fear was all he found. Gritting his teeth against the pain in his knee, he picked up the pace, loping through the empty halls as quickly as he dared without disabling himself. The corridors began to widen until one opened out into a huge open space surrounded with staircases. Jupiter's trail wound up the nearest one, then up another. As he followed, he saw that the staircases wove together to form an elegant, narrowing lattice around the edge a central atrium that went up beyond what Caine could make out. He was halfway up to the third level when the lights rose and fell in three distinct pulses. In between the last two _there she was_ on the next staircase above him, hands thrown out defensively, eyes wide with rage and betrayal.

And then she was gone.

Caine threw caution to the wind and howled, " _JUPITER!_ " as he bolted up the stairs. But the next sweep of stairs was empty and only the echo of his own cry answered him. He slumped against the thick banister and choked down a few deep breaths, letting his blood clear of the thundering drum of adrenaline. His head throbbed in concert, but that didn't fade. Fuck, how bad were his head wounds if he was hallucinating? 

Two flights further up the lights pulsed again, and she appeared above him, there and then gone. And again after he'd ascended three more levels. 

And again. 

And again. 

And again.

Staticky broken snapshots, rapid glimmers of her face and hands, a macabre stop motion animation playing over and over as Caine floundered up the never-fucking-ending stairs. The constricting pain and breathlessness from his ribs and the sharp stabbing in his knee sapped his endurance, and fear his self-control, the only thing keeping him together the faint, but still-there trace of her scent. 

After another apparition, where she blinked in and out just beyond the reach of his fingertips, Caine sagged to his knees and pressed his forehead to the cool stone of a landing between levels. "Jupiter, please," he whispered, but only his ragged breath and pounding pulse answered him. 

Struggling to regain his composure, Caine forced himself to count his breaths, like he was fucking back on the crèche training ground facing his first trials, small and terrified and alone, all-too-clear that if he failed here, he would not get another chance. He squeezed his eyes shut and went back to the security of his training: assess and acquire intel. He ticked back through all the apparitions he'd seen. Stinger probably could have picked up a lot, but even Caine's enhanced senses weren't sharp enough to get much from the split second flickers. Visual assessment was a bust. Move on. For the few that had appeared close by, he couldn't smell her, couldn't hear her heartbeat, just a weird staticky shiver that ground right into his bones.

Wait... That sensation...

It hit him: _They're fucking com-holos_. The signals broken up by the erratic power surges, but they were _real_ , not just in his head. Relief shuddered through him, propelling him to his feet and onward, renewed focus brushing away the webs of panic that had trapped his thoughts in terrible circles. Had Jupiter gotten a message out? Was she trying to use the alcazar's system to send him a message, call him for help?

He forged on, grimly sweeping up floor by floor, thirty now by his count, and still the staircases spiraled up unending into the darkness. He was about to abandon the scent trail and skate up with his boots despite the risk of splattering himself on the now distant floor below when an apparition appeared right in front of him. He ran right through it before skidding to a stop. She was gone again by the time he turned back, but he'd seen enough - she'd been covered in blood, streaks of it down her face, smearing the artfully applied makeup, matted with tangles of hair that had fallen from the elaborate coif, the lines of her nose and jaw achingly familiar, but her eyes utterly alien.

The holos... they _weren't Jupiter_.

Shock at the realization was blasted away by a pulse beam that missed blowing a hole through his chest by inches and obliterated part of the banister. Caine dove up the last few steps and dropped prone on the landing. Something, a lot of somethings, skittered down a hall, and at least two squads of security synths piled around a corner and opened fire.

Everything in his head fell away, instinct and training taking over. He rolled under the barrage of pulse blasts, picking off the lead shooters with his mauler before coming up to his feet and charging down the hallway to dive right into the middle of them. The tension that had wound up in him ever since he'd awakened released in an exhilarating rush and within minutes he stood in the middle of a mess of slagged lumps and discarded parts. 

Still riding the adrenaline from the fight he ran down the corridor from where they'd come. It opened into another small atrium, the reek of ozone and plasma fire thick, like running into a wall, and the sudden full brightness of the lights forcing him to squint. The scene before him was not unlike the one he'd just left, maybe an hour old, and all these security synths clearly taken down by mauler fire. It wasn't neat or pretty - some of them had been blown apart by concentrated fire rather than precise blasts, but twelve of them, a full squad, lay strewn across the floor. 

Jupiter's scent was all over the room under the miasma of weapons fire, and Caine grinned fiercely. She had done this. It made it easier, knowing she was at least armed, still had the mauler he'd commissioned for her - designed to fit her small hands perfectly - when she'd asked him about teaching her to defend herself in those early months after her ascension. "I'd rather not have to depend on my 'find metal pipe' skills again," she'd said, wryly. She'd proved to be a surprisingly good shot, and Stinger had drilled her for hours at her request, peppering the side of the old barn at the farmhouse with a mural of holes and scorching.

Caine followed her trail out of the atrium into another series of hallways that led back around to the staircases, and then it was _gone_.

Shit, shit, shit! He backtracked, scouring the level. It didn't take long - each floor was smaller than the last, this whole part of the alcazar narrowing as it rose - but there was no further trace of her. 

He climbed two more levels without catching a whiff of her scent, but he did find another squad of synths waiting for him. He got his shoulder singed, and the fight lasted irritatingly longer than the previous one, exhaustion dragging him down, but once he disarmed the last one (literally) and dropped the pieces to the floor, he gave an ugly laugh. This was almost as helpful as an actual trail to follow. If someone didn't want him going any further up, then that's exactly where he needed to be. He entertained and immediately discarded finding a transport beam. Even though it looked everything from the level where synths had first appeared on up had power, he didn't trust that anything in this fucking place worked well enough to take that risk.

So up again, and up and up.

"No, no don't!" The cry brought Caine to a standstill halfway up the fiftieth flight of stairs. It echoed weirdly through the narrowing atrium, requiring precious second before he pinpointed its direction and darted off after it. 

He found... Oh dear gods of light and dark. She stood in the middle of a corridor, hands up as if to ward off a blow, fucking staring straight at him. "Please, don't. Help!"

It's not Jupiter, he reminded himself. It's _not_.

This holo was full strength: the blood smearing her face and pale gown vivid red, the terror in her voice vibrant and resonant. She crumpled to her knees and cried out again and again, hands flung over her head as invisible blows rained down on her, driving her all the way to the floor until there was nothing but silence and her still form. 

The holo popped out of existence like a bubble, leaving him in an empty hall, staring at the empty space where he was pretty sure he'd just watched a recording of Seraphi Abrasax's murder.

Bile rose in this throat. He spit it out, the acrid burn all he could taste and smell for a few minutes. Caine had seen a lot of terrible shit in his life, but watching the mirror image of his beloved beaten to death right in front of him? That...

Caine swallowed down another gorge of bile and forced himself to move on, resolutely ignoring the occasional repeats of the holo that dogged him as he climbed, unwilling to watch the life bleed from those unfamiliar eyes in that familiar face again (not that it wasn't seared into his brain already, to haunt deep of his nightmares for the rest of his life). Not needing to keep on a scent trail, he engaged the boots enough to take each flight of stairs in a couple of bounding leaps. A fall from that wasn't going to damage him much worse, and he needed to find Jupiter _now_.

The stairs ended ten more levels up, and he vaulted into a wide hall and five more squads of synths. Caine didn't bother to take them down, just plowed his way through, taking the only corridor he saw.

Jupiter's scent suddenly bloomed fresh and close as he skimmed around a corner. There, up ahead, it spilled out of a wide archway, snarled with the smell of rotting vegetation and the damp of water. There, she was _there_ , but... He blasted apart two drones that rolled around the corner behind him. It was Jupiter, he was stone certain of it, but there was something else too. Something deeper, something dark and old and _afraid_.

The remaining squads of drones surged around the corner in the wake of their cannon fodder and Caine threw himself down the corridor, skidded through the arch and slammed his elbow into the control panel. He blew the door control panel out with a shot after the door swished shut, effectively locking it. 

Alarms chimed, more gentle than klaxons for delicate Entitled ears, as he crept through the overgrowth, following Jupiter's scent toward the sound of burbling water. The overgrowth gave way to an open square paved with artfully carved white flagstones. A fountain, taller than him, wide enough that he'd need an assist from his boots to jump it, sat just off center. Sunlight warmed the air from the high, glass domed ceiling, sparkling off the algae-choked water that dripped over the lip of the fountain's bowl. And in the center of the square, drifting in a lazy, slow spin a few feet in the air, eyes closed, body relaxed in the grip of a stasis beam...

" _Jupiter._ "

She looked okay, no significant injuries that he could see, but the flagstones under her were stained dark. Blood, a lot of it. The stinking greenish water that spilled over the fountain's edge had saturated some of it, and the smell of both together gagged him. That was the source of the Jupiter-but-not-Jupiter smell. Her blood, but not. 

Caine had only taken a step toward where Jupiter slowly spun in the beam when a sharp, "Stay away! You will not have her!" sounded in his ear over the pleasant chime of the alarms. Caine spun, mauler at ready, but no one appeared. He held position, keeping Jupiter in his peripheral vision as he looked for the source of the voice. "Who are you?"

He was about to take another step when the alarm chimes stopped and the voice announced, "I am Pazar, the Presence of Her Majesty Seraphi's alcazar. Do not approach her, splice."

Whatever. Caine shuffled a few inches forward and the Presence fucking _hissed_. He stopped, picking up faint rustles in the dense vegetation. Holding his finger clearly off the mauler's trigger, he held up his hands. "She is not Seraphi Abrasax. Her name is Jupiter Jones, and you need to let her go. She is _not_ your queen, Presence." 

"She is! Recurred or not, she is mine!" 

Just fucking great, Caine thought, scanning the geodesic support frame of the dome, looking for the beam's generator. "She's _not your queen_ ," Caine growled. "And I'm here to help her."

"Of course you are. Just like _he_ was."

What the - and then it dawned on him. Balem. The Presence must be talking about Balem. Jupiter hadn't said much about time they were separated at the refinery, but one night as they'd sat on the roof of Stinger's barn, after her first lesson with the boots he'd gotten for her, she had leaned against his shoulder and said, "It's strange sometimes, going through sheaves, seeing my face in all the House histories. Like I'm haunting myself." She'd laughed, a hollow sound. "Not just myself. He told me - not details, but I think he beat her to death. He told me she begged him to kill her. I think he was going to do the same to me, because all he really saw was her, and she terrified him." Jupiter didn't name him, she never did unless she was talking House business, but Caine knew.

"I'm not Balem. Jupiter isn't Seraphi. This is _different_."

Pazar continued on, as if he hadn't spoken. "I tried to send for help. I recorded it all and sent it out on a broad spectrum distress beacon, but he did something to me, something that blocked my access to the external communications array, and then I fell asleep..." Pazar trailed off, voice gone thin and reedy like a guilty child. "I fell asleep, and when I awoke, she was gone, everyone was _gone_ , and I could not find all my pieces."

"You did your best," Caine said, trying to juggle how best to reason with a fucking sentient building, find the beam generator, and track whatever was approaching through the garden. "We know Balem killed her. And he has paid in his own blood. Your queen is avenged. You can let Jupiter go."

"You lie! You are here to take her, just like he did. He tricked her here, just like you have. But I will keep her safe, this time. She's returned to me, and I will keep her safe forever. 

"You are clever and determined, splice, but you will not have my queen." Pazar's voice dropped to a whisper in his ear: " _I will not fail her again._ "

Her words hadn't even faded away when the space suddenly filled with synths. Caine had marked the positions of the first vanguard from their sloppy approach through the plants and trees and took most of them out in a handful of shots before throwing himself back into the cover of the garden.

Pazar screeched, and Caine really hoped the synths were the only security measures in the room. The Presence's system was seriously corrupted by whatever Balem had done, and he was going to be paste if it had access to a pulse battery in here somewhere.

The garden was large enough that he was able to move freely, and he used the space to stalk the synths down one by one as they crashed around attempting to find him. And then he saw it, the slight sparkle in the air. It was the stasis beam, the sunlight lensed through it. He followed the distortion up to the generator affixed up on one of the lattice struts. 

"You cannot hide from me forever, splice. You will not have my queen."

He answered by obliterating the beam generator with a precise blast. The beam flared and collapsed in a glittering rain, followed by a loud yelp from Jupiter. Charging straight back to the square, he came out on the other side of the fountain from her. "Jupiter!"

"Caine?!" She was scrambling to her feet, surprise and relief singing in her voice. And five synths taking aim behind her.

"Get down!" he yelled, overlapping Pazar's cry of "Stand down!" The synths stopped, rifles raised, and Caine took off each of their heads before he shouted, "Catch!" and flung his mauler across the fountain, using the momentum of the throw to spin and grab the synth coming up behind him. He removed its head as well before plucking its plasma rifle out of its hands as it collapsed at his feet. 

Jupiter was already firing when he engaged the boots to leap over the fountain. They ended up back to back as more synths poured in to surround them. They'd gotten the door open, apparently.

"You okay?" He eyed the advancing synths. It looked bad. Okay, it _was_ bad.

Jupiter pressed against his back, the rapid flutter of her breath vibrating through him. "I'm effectively standing in a pool of my own blood, I was kidnapped by a paranoid, unhinged computer _after_ being shot out of space probably by the guy I'm supposed to be making an alliance with, and was starting to wonder if you were dead. So you know, just another day." He felt her free arm twist awkwardly behind her to pat his hip. "But it's improving."

Caine couldn't help but grin. She sounded terrible: angry and disgusted and afraid, but like herself, like _his_ Jupiter, and if she was okay, he'd make everything else work. He shifted the butt of the plasma rife to the crook of his elbow so he could curl his fingers around her wrist for just a moment, desperate to feel her pulse against his skin.

"So now what?" The flutter of her breathing was shifting into a whole body shudder. Shaking, he realized, probably the remnants of the stasis beam's effects. He needed to get her out of here fast, and unfortunately, he'd have to do it without a fight, because right now, neither of them would probably make it out of one alive.

"Pazar," he said, but the Presence was already shouting, "Seize him! He wants to steal my queen!" The synths surged inward at her command and so much for no fight. Caine shoved Jupiter behind him and yelled, "You're going to hurt her, you stupid piece of slagware!" as he opened fire-

"Enough!" Jupiter's command broke through the commotion and everything stopped. The synths buzzed, agitated, and Caine did, too, until Jupiter stretched up to dig her fingers into the collar of his vest, anchoring him down. "Enough, Pazar. Stand down."

"Your majesty, you are not safe! Allow me to protect you. I swear I can! Please!" Pazar said in anguish. "It will be different this time. I will find a stronger stasis beam, and better place for it. There is a secure chamber in the lowest levels. I considered it, but I thought you would prefer the sun and stars above you. I should have known that would be a security weakness. I know that now." Pazar's voice dropped to a cajoling murmur. "I swear, my queen, this time no one will ever find you."

"You can't keep me here," Jupiter said softly, terror breaking in her voice, and it took every last bit of Caine's self-control to not grab Jupiter and launch them straight up and away from this terrible place, away from the horror of Jupiter being all but buried alive here somewhere. 

"But Your Majesty-" Pazar's frantic whine was interrupted by the soft chime of the alarm klaxons. "What? More intruders!" 

"Pazar, what's happening?" Jupiter had to yell over the Presence's angry squeal, but a holo popped up at her question, showing a familiar ship setting down a few hundred feet from the alcazar, twelve heavily armed figures spilling out and moving swiftly. Caine rolled his eyes. Fucking perfect. The mercenaries had found them.

Pazar wasn't happy about it either. "How dare they!"

"Pazar," Jupiter said, keeping her voice calm and low as if trying to gentle a wild animal, "can you keep them out?" But it had no effect.

"HOW DARE THEY?" Her voice screamed into an unnatural pitch, all trace of the human relation overlay consumed by a piercing electronic sibilation that almost drove Caine to his knees. "HOW DARE ALL OF YOU! THIS ENDS NOW!" 

Caine was in complete agreement on that. "Run!" Grabbing Jupiter's hand he charged straight through the confused synths, breaking through the tangled greenery toward the closest curve of the dome. Swinging the rifle up, he opened fire at the glass as they ran. He was starting to worry it wasn't going to work when the glass exploded out, glittering in the sun and he tossed the rifle away so he could grab Jupiter and -

"Oh god, not again!" she yelled as Caine held her tight and launched them out the hole into the brilliant, bright, sun-warmed sky.

*******

Since the mercs had gotten them into this clusterfuck, Caine was quite happy to use them to get out of it. It was short work to secure their ship - they'd only left two guards and the pilot on board, and he left them in a neat pile on the ground outside. 

The alcazar swung into view as he eased the ship off the ground. It hadn't been his imagination - it was enormous, an oval base nestled in once pristinely-maintained gardens and grounds. Most of the base was now covered in vines, like he'd seen out of the breach in the outer wall, tracing green and gold swirls across the brilliant white of the walls that swooped inward as it rose, hundreds of feet, to the stunning glass-domed spire from which they'd leapt. 

Caine toyed with the pulse cannon controls, the idea of watching that spire and everything in it collapse in fire really fucking enticing, but he wasn't sure how Jupiter would react right now, so he turned the ship away before he started their ascent, just viciously glad to have the place in his wake.

He got them into orbit before the shakes started. Oh, combat drop, he thought distantly as his vision doubled, the adrenaline bottoming out of his system as his body took stock, now that he was secure with his target, of all the damage he'd pushed through. 

"Caine?" Jupiter's face swam into view, twinning and shifting into and out of focus over and over, and he sucked in heaving breaths when he wasn't sure for a second if he was seeing Jupiter or Seraphi. "Caine, slow down. Breathe. Caine, you're hyperventilating. Stay still. I'll be right back."

The chair he sat in wasn't exactly comfortable, but his body didn't care, slumping down without his permission as his chest worked like a bellows, head lolling back, eyes falling closed. That at least stopped the ship's bridge from spinning around him, which was nice.

"Here." Jupiter was saying suddenly and he blinked his eyes open. She had a canister of Regen, the low-grade shit sold on the open market, held out at arms-length, balanced on her palms like it was going to turn and bite her. Concern and distaste warred across her already exhaustion-scarred features. 

"Your majesty, I'm okay. I'll be okay. Jupiter, it's fine." He would be, probably, but Jupiter shook her head. 

"You're clearly not, and I need you. I need you _okay_. So please just tell me what to do." 

He couldn't deny her that, even to protect her from the thing she hated so much, so he talked her through setting the line, unable to stop a relieved groan as it flooded through him. It wasn't as fast or good as Legion or Aegis grade treatment, but his head started to clear within a few minutes.

"Rest. I'll set the portal, okay?" Jupiter stroked his cheek and pressed a kiss to his forehead before turning to putter around the nav console. Caine watched her as his vision returned to normal, marking the stiffness of her spine, the twitch of muscles across her shoulders, the tremors in her hands as she found the portal control and started to key in jump coordinates.

The indicator on the Regen can blinked the halfway mark. Seraphi Abrasax had died, in part, for this. Jupiter had almost died twice because of it. And if she hadn't gone along with her cousin's plan, if her gene-print hadn't tripped in the system, she and her family and everyone else on Earth would have been Harvested for it. 

The slow pulse of the Regen turned to ice in his veins.

"Okay, the portal's set. We can go whenever you're up to taking us out of orbit." Jupiter leaned against the nav console, back to him, arms wrapped tight around herself. She stared out the main viewscreen, which showed the curve of the planet below them, beautiful and peaceful from this vantage. 

"Your majesty, come sit. We're okay. We're safe. You're safe."

But she shook her head, still fixated on the planet. "I'm never really going to be free of her, am I? I'm always going to be this _replica_ of someone else."

She wasn't, not to him, or Stinger, but there was, unfortunately nothing he could say to deny that about pretty much everyone else in the gyre, so Caine did the only thing he knew to comfort her, reaching out to hook two fingers in the bend of her elbow. "Come here," he said, drawing her into his lap and pressing her head to his shoulder. She shuddered and curled into him when he cocooned her with his undamaged wing.

Holding her tight, breathing her in over and over, Caine licked the sour salt of tears and sweat from her skin, desperate for the smell and taste of her to wash away the sickening tang of rot and Seraphi's blood that still clung to the back of his throat.


End file.
